We continue to see extremely wild swings on Wall Street. On Monday, at one point the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 352 points, and then later it was down 566 points. At the closing bell the Dow had officially lost 245 points, and all of this extreme volatility is making investors very nervous. Investors like markets that are predictable, because it is a whole lot easier to make money when things move in a predictable fashion. When things get crazy, a lot of investors pull their money out and wait until things settle down in the marketplace, and that definitely makes a lot of sense. Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty about where things are ultimately headed. Some experts believe that the bull market will resume after this “correction” is over, but others believe that a bear market has now begun. And as you will see below, the fact that the S&P 500 has now broken a major trendline that has not been broken since 2009 is strengthening the case of the latter group.

Many had anticipated that we may see a bounce on Monday, but instead we witnessed another very large decline. According to Zero Hedge, all of the major stock indexes are now officially in correction territory….

As the U.S. trade deficit has been widening for the fourth month running, markets and business experts appear once again bewildered by the events and unsure how to react to them. On the one hand, they had vehemently opposed the increase in trade tariffs and the trade war that has made headlines this year. But on the other hand, they now find that U.S. trade deficit reaching its largest level on record — the precise deficit tariffs purported to narrow — is very worrying. Furthermore, as they scramble to adjust their costs and production plans to the increasing uncertainty of world trade relations — including here not only U.S.’s trade disputes with China, but also UK’s planned exit from the EU and the fraught relationships at the WTO — global companies are also paying less attention to the Fed’s and other central banks’ monetary policies….

President Trump’s decisive actions on trade with China are a long time in coming because U.S. manufacturers have struggled for years against heavily subsidized competition from China.

And whether it’s hefty industrial subsidies, currency undervaluation, intellectual property theft, or the dumping of steel and other products, it’s clear that China has stacked the deck against U.S. producers….

Donald Trump threw financial pundits back on their heels this week when he told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t have tariffs anywhere.”

The financial press has obsessed over tariffs for most of the year, first declaring that the tariffs were a tax on consumers and would cost Americans jobs. And when those predictions did not pan out–consumer price levels are in line with the Fed’s target and layoffs are at record low levels–carefully looking for and extensively reporting anecdotal evidence of claims not supported by data.

President Trump’s comments to the Wall Street Journal, however, went even further….

Economics: it’s the study of human action and its unintended consequences, and I think it teaches us a lot about wise Christian stewardship and compassionate, prudent public policy. Here are four examples I recently shared with students in a colleague’s class at Samford University….